Marie Viková

"Then, that army from Slovakia was passing through both Bystřice and Chvalčov. Everyone said that the army takes away livestock, whatever is in the house, they take it. My uncle went to drive the livestock to the forest as well, to save it, and we stayed all alone at the manor, me, mommy and my smallest brother. I have this memory, in the yard, not far from the barn, there was an outhouse, I had to go there and just at that time, the soldiers came. There was this huge gate and they started bang it. I thought to myself, now I'm going to die, everyone will start to shoot and I'll fall in the septic tank. But they did not shoot. They were half Slovak, half maybe Ukrainian, I don't know for sure. They were lead by a [female] captain. They brought their own food and mommy cooked a stew from that. All of us had to eat with them, maybe the captain wanted to be sure that we would not want to poison them. So we ate with them. The Slovak captain then told what horrible things the Germans did in Slovakia. She said, for example, that they came to a farm, they wanted to know where the man is, the woman said that she doesn't know and they just replied that in that case, he's with the resistance in the mountains. And one picked a baby from the cot, tore it in two and threw it back."